Dads in Distress: lending a helping hand to alienated fathers

Alan Patterson of Landsdale (Dads in Distress Facilitator). Alan is a facilitator for a group called Dads in Distress, a body that offers support to dads undergoing acrimonious splits from partners and struggling to gain custody/visitation rights to children. Photo: David Baylis

ALAN Patterson knows too much about distress.

The Landsdale father is a facilitator at the Perth branch of national male support group Dads in Distress.

The group’s credo is to stem the tide of “suicide in single fathers due to trauma incurred during painful divorce or separation”.

Meeting weekly, the group gives men enduring painful separations a forum to vent their feelings and tools to better prepare themselves for single fatherhood.

For Alan, divorce was a difficult period, but nothing compared to the pain caused when his 17-year-old daughter Kate committed suicide in 2007.